This invention generally relates to a training harness designed to be used to assist and support a child while learning activities such as walking, skating, skiing or swimming. The harness is also useful as a safety device to restrain undue movement of a child. The harness can also be used to assist disabled individuals who require support either in the learning stages or in readaptation and rehabilitation stages of mobile activities including walking, skating, skiing or swimming.
The novel training harness is simple in construction and operation, having cooperating chest bands, and support straps. The support straps both engage the wearer's body and extend to become handles for the harness. In a preferred embodiment, the elevation or height at which users hold the handles remains substantially constant regardless of the wearer's torso size, because the height is a function of both the length of the handles and the body height and size of the wearer. The novel training harness further provides good support and balance without restraining movement of the wearer.
Harnesses have been made for many specific applications. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,701,395 to Theobald shows a rescue and safety vest with separate front and back portions and with wide leg straps which, in use, encircle the legs of the wearer and provide lifting support therefor in cases where the wearer is unconscious, injured or in an inaccessible place and needs to be lifted without undue pressure on any area of the body. Conversely, the body harness of the present invention is more simple in construction, operation, and is designed so that in use the height of the handle means, which is to be grasped by persons or a mechanism assisting the wearer, is kept substantially constant when the harness is fitted to various body sizes.
Other prior devices, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 703,483 and 758,123, have been used to restrain child movement. U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,310,958 and 2,677,488 also disclose safety harnesses for children which utilize belt and shoulder straps with restraint handles connected to the waist belt. Waist height handles do not provide the desirable level of balanced support for a wearer as is achieved in the present invention.